


Bolero

by lmeden



Series: Snape LDWS [5]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 14:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bolero

"I can grant you clemency,"

says the Headmaster as he settles into the hard chair across the table from Severus. The older man's beard is long and full; enough so to act as a robe all on its own. It shifts around him, and Dumbledore gravely tucks it between himself and the table as he gazes at his former student.

Severus considers the man's words. One word, really. Clemency. Can he take such a boon? He doesn't know. For he has, so recently, discovered himself to be a monster. He realized this the night before, outside the small house in Godric's Hollow.

Standing as still as if he had been spelled in place. Watching intently the house with heavy eaves that shadowed the windows and hid any struggle taking place within. Listening to the screams of his best friend as she mourned for her husband and pleaded for her life and cried, 'Not Harry!, over and over, until with a flash of bright green light she was gone forever. Apparating dully away and acceding lifelessly to the spells of the Aurors as they captured him and locked him away in this small, white cell.

And now the Headmaster offers him clemency. Severus feels little towards the man; neither disgust nor gratitude nor hate. He remembers instead the vows he made, on his knees, to a handsome Dark Lord that he believed in with what little heart he had. He knows that Dumbledore is offering him a new beginning.

He can redeem himself. Abandon all his previous beliefs and forge knew ones.

But no. He cannot abandon those old ideals, no matter how repugnant they are to him now. He will stick to the course he had decided upon in the height of teenage foolishness. He will reap his own consequences. And he will follow wherever this path leads him – it is, after all, the only course that a monster like him is fit for.

"I refuse," he replies to the Headmaster's long-ago suggestion.

I seems only moments until the Aurors come and take him away to Azkaban.


End file.
